> For example, if Linus Torvald use Apple, many Linux users may want to try it too.
Anyone who tries to run Linux on any non-x86 architecture will find
themselves in, uh, odd situations. For one thing, any architecture
besides x86 is a second class citizen. You will experience the
following:
1. You won't get any closed source programs for Linux ordinarily
available on x86. No Adobe Acrobat Reader 7 (recently released for x86
Linux), no commercial games, no VMWare, etc.
2. There are hardware manufacturers who *insist* on closed-sourcing
their drivers. You won't get the nVidia drivers for PPC.
3. You might not find binaries for some OSS stuff, which means you
need to compile it yourself. You *may* get compile errors if the
original author did not test his software on your architecture, which
means you get to debug it yourself (oh fun!).
There is no solution to 1 and 2 (See why closed source is sometimes
evil? Closed source vendors *assume* a particular architecture for you
and doesn't care whether you might be using something other than x86).
Problem number 3 might put off newbies.
Using a non-x86 Linux is a fun challenge (I developed my entire final
year project using Linux-SPARC back in the day), but not many people
might enjoy it when they run into problems.
-= Nur Hussein =-
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